Aggie - By Katie McGxxxx (read comment)

Aggie

I woke up screaming again because I dreamt that Aggie was hurt. She was crying and her face was smeared with tears and dirt. I wanted to help her but I couldn’t move. I tried to tell her I couldn’t move, but my words were all mushy baby-talk. Her eyes were bright bright and Ag was scared bad. There was red all over my pink dress and Aggie’s too, like the roses daddy gave mommy on Valenstine Day and I was crying because Ag was hurt bad and I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t help.

I sat up in bed, knocking Frankie the pink elephant on the floor, and looked out the window. The backyard shimmered in the moonlight like a fairy story and the swing creaked back and forth on its long chain. The swing was moving as though in a breeze but the leaves in the old oak tree didn’t move. I thought, “Aggie’s still outside,” and shivered in the dark. I lay awake for a long time.



The next time I woke up to the sound of daddy crying. Pale morning sunshine sifted through the window and onto daddy’s face, kneeling at the foot of Aggie’s bed on the other side of the room. I peeked through my messy hair at him, pretending to still be asleep, but he didn’t seem to see me. After a minute he shuffled over to my bed and saw Frankie on the floor. He bent over and picked up the stuffed animal, then looked at it as though seeing it for the first time, like something scared him. I squeezed my eyes shut because I didn’t want him to know I was awake. Another sob escaped his throat and he leaned over me and put Frankie on the bed beside the window.



A short while later I heard the screen door slam shut in the kitchen and I crawled out of bed just in time to see my parents’ car backing out of the driveway. Fenway was barking in the kitchen. I wondered where they were going without me, then heard someone singing downstairs. And I smelled cookies. “Gramma Margaret!” I thought.

Gramma Margaret was my daddy’s mommy. I couldn’t remember ever spending so much time with her, but lately she was around a lot. I figured it was because of Aggie, but I didn’t ask, and no one was talking to me much except Gramma Margaret. Mommy and daddy were what the neighbors said in their quiet voices, “grief-stricken.” Or maybe it was “grief-sicken.” I wasn’t sure, but they seemed sick. They were always so sad and didn’t hardly eat. Daddy drank lots of coffee and mommy was drinking something else that smelled icky, but they didn’t eat much. They didn’t even make supper for me, not even a pb and j. So Gramma Margaret was over a lot and she took care of me now. Everyone calls me Maggie, but my real name is Margaret just like her. Daddy said she’s the best cook in the whole world and maybe someday I’d be a great cook too. Ag was named after mommy’s Aunt Agatha, who she spent lots of summers with when she was a little girl. I didn’t know why she wasn’t around too, all I knew was there cookies downstairs and Gramma Margaret made them all for me.

When I went downstairs, my favoritest cartoons were on the TV all morning and Gramma Margaret didn’t even make me eat yucky boring breakfast before letting me have warm cookies right from the oven. Right from the oven was the best. I sat cross-legged on the carpet in the living room with my plate of cookies and a big glass of milk while Gramma Margaret made more cookies and even cupcakes with the surprise frosting in the middle. We didn’t even mind when Fenway barked and barked at us and jumped around on his little pug legs. Gramma said, “Hush Fenway!” and I said, “Yeah, hush Fenway!” He barked anyway but it was still fun to tell him to hush.

One time a long time ago Fenway had worms and he’d drag his bum around on the carpet. Aggie said, “Fenny’s dragging his fanny!” and me and Ag laughed and laughed and rolled around on the floor with Fenway, pulling his curly tail. I think mommy and daddy were laughing more at me and Ag, but we thought it was funny. And Fenway dragging his bum on the floor. Mommy said it was gross so she gave him medicine and he didn’t drag his bum anymore. After that I always watched out for worms on the sidewalk when we were taking walks with Fenny. Mommy said it wasn’t those pink worms that Fenway had, but I thought we couldn’t be too careful. Fenny barked a lot now and I thought maybe he had something else kind of like worms, except instead of dragging his bum it made him bark. I’d have to ask Gramma Margaret.



When mommy and daddy came home later I heard daddy say something about stuffed animals on the floor. I thought he was mad that my room was messy because half of it was Ag’s but she wasn’t here to clean help clean it up anymore. I didn’t want him to have more stuff to be upset about so I ran upstairs and put my animals back on the bed really neatly. Mommy showed me how to make my bed before but sometimes I forgot to do it. I was just finished when mommy and daddy came into my room. Mommy scrunched up her forehead like she was mad or confused and looked at daddy. Daddy made the same face and said, “They were on the floor before. The elephant was over there,” and pointed. “I put it by the window, look where it is now.”

“Frankie,” mommy said. “The elephant’s name is Frankie.” Then she cried and walked out of the room with her face in her hands.

Daddy looked at Ag’s bed, with the stuffed animals all in the same place as when she left them, then looked at my bed again. I looked at him from beside the bed, hoping for him to say it was good. He just looked at the stuffed animals curiously like he saw something weird. Something weird and maybe kind of scary. I was scared too because maybe he saw a spider or something, but I didn’t see it. “Daddy?” I asked. His eyes got wide then and he went out of the room in a hurry. That made me cry because I thought I’d disappointed him.



Things went on like this for a while. Mommy and daddy were gone a lot and acted like they didn’t have a daughter anymore. So Gramma Margaret came over every day and I ate so many cookies I thought I would ‘splode, but I never got sick like mommy said I would one time if I ate bunches of cookies. Sometimes I just watched my favorite cartoons all day, and other times Gramma Margaret would play games with me or color. One time I put a picture up on the fridge for mommy and daddy that I drew with my crayons, of me and Aggie on the swing, but I don’t think they liked it because it made mommy upset and they took it down and put it in a drawer. Fenway still barked a lot but Gramma Margaret said it wasn’t something like worms. She said he was just upset about what happened and that was how he talked about it. I guessed that was okay.



Gramma Margaret asked me about the funeral one time because she didn’t get to go. This made me kind of quiet and sad because I couldn’t hardly remember any of it. I remember there were lots of people and lots of flowers around. I wanted to smell them but I couldn’t. There was a white dress that was new and the face I knew so well was in a box and then the box went under the ground. It made me sad that the box went in the ground because it was pretty like mommy’s jewelry box. It made me smile to think that she was like a pretty necklace in a jewelry box though.

But that night I had bad dreams about Aggie wearing a ruby necklace in a box, except it was mommy’s jewelry box, not the other box that wasn’t for jewelry but for little girls. Then Aggie wasn’t wearing the necklace, but she was a ruby necklace. All red and cold. I told Gramma Margaret about the dream but she said the real Aggie wasn’t in the box. Aggie was somewhere else. I asked her if Aggie was getting cookies and milk too and Gramma Margaret thought she just might be. Maybe she had someone like a Gramma Margaret taking care of her, too.



That night there was a bad storm outside and the big oak tree outside my window blew and blew in the wind. I was scared because it was the first time there was a big storm since I didn’t have Aggie to share a room with. My bed was against the window but hers wasn’t, so I’d go into her bed on those nights and we’d snuggle together and the storm wouldn’t seem so scary. I thought about sleeping in her bed anyway that night, but then I didn’t because I thought it would make daddy upset. I’d been more careful since that other time about putting my stuffed animals back on the bed right. He always seemed to notice when I didn’t. I shut my eyes tight against the night though, because while the storm was scary, I was extra scared because the swing hanging on the tree wasn’t moving at all.



The next day I overheard daddy telling mommy he thought he needed to “Talk to someone.” I thought it was weird because he was already talking to mommy, but I guess that wasn’t what he meant. He said he was seeing things and hearing things, like crying and little girl voices. That scared me because I was the only little girl in the house and I cried but I couldn’t help it sometimes. Why would that make daddy need to “talk to someone” and sound so scared? Daddy also said something about his mother being around. Why would daddy seem upset about Gramma Margaret being around? Mommy didn’t seem scared, but she was drinking the icky smelling drink and it made her act different than my mommy did before Aggie went away. I’d have to ask Gramma Margaret.



The next day I told Gramma Margaret what daddy had said about “talking to someone.” She sighed and handed me a cupcake with the special secret frosting in the middle and asked me what I remembered about the swing. I said the tree broke and Aggie got hurt because she was on the swing under it. She looked at me closely and asked where I was when the tree broke. I said I was right by Aggie because I was pushing her on the swing. Gramma Margaret asked me why I didn’t get hurt too. This made me mad but I didn’t know why and I wouldn’t eat the cupcake. I smashed it onto the plate and the frosting oozed out of it so it wasn’t a special secret anymore but just stuff on a plate and I ran out the kitchen door. Mommy was at the kitchen sink washing dishes and when the door slammed it startled her so much she dropped a glass on the floor and it broke into about a billion pieces. I didn’t look back, but I knew Gramma Margaret didn’t help mommy pick up the broken glass.

I ran across the backyard to the big old oak tree where it happened. Before I could reach the swing I stopped and realized it wasn’t there. How could that be? I wondered. I just saw it through the window. In fact the limb the swing was hanging on wasn’t even there. I remembered it fell, but I had just seen it. At night, in the storm, when I had bad dreams. I always saw the swing from my bedroom window. I ran back into the house to ask Gramma Margaret where the swing was but she wasn’t in the kitchen. Mommy was sitting at the table where I just was, but the smashed cupcake was gone and replaced with a glass of the icky stuff. She didn’t even look up when I went past her and up the stairs to me and Aggie’s room. I slammed the door shut with all the rage I could muster and for the first time in weeks noticed the mirror on the back of the door. I noticed because I wasn’t in it.



Gramma Margaret came back the next day and I told her I wasn’t in the mirror. She didn’t answer but just looked at me for a minute then said, “Aggie’s on her way.”

The phone rang then, loud and abruptly, and daddy answered. After a minute he hung up and his face was gray. He called for mommy and she walked slowly towards him. He told her Aggie was gone and mommy dropped another glass, this time with the icky stuff in it. I was glad she wouldn’t be drinking that particular icky stuff, but I wasn’t glad to see her crying so hard. Mommy and daddy went out then and Gramma Margaret played Go Fish with me.

I felt like we were waiting for something to happen but I was kind of scared. I remembered the empty mirror and the swing that wasn’t there. The box that looked like a jewelry box and the face that looked just like my face inside. “Gramma?”

“Yes sweetheart?”

“That was me in the jewelry box, wasn’t it?”

“Yes it was.”

I cried on my fish cards and Gramma Margaret held me in her arms. I told her it was scary and dark in the box and she said she knew, she had been in a box for a long time. But we had each other because she came back to take care of me until Aggie was ready.

I heard the kitchen door squeak open then and heard my twin sister calling my name. I ran into the kitchen and Aggie was there, not a ruby necklace, not even wearing a ruby necklace, and I hugged hugged hugged her. Standing behind Aggie was a woman I never saw before, but she had a nice Gramma-type face and I knew who she was. “Hi Aunt Agatha,” I said and smiled smiled so big. Fenway barked around us but that was okay. Soon he would get over the not-worms that made him bark and it would be quiet quiet at the house again. I felt bad for mommy and daddy, but happy too because now me and Aggie and Gramma Margaret and Aunt Agatha could all go on together. And I bet there would be cookies where we were going.

Katie McGxxxx

July 18, 2008